While
going about my business this Saturday as I normally do, I happened
to read your staff editorial on binge drinking at Oberlin,
and was knocked (metaphorically) ass-over-teakettle by its implication
that people who like to drink several nights a week  people
such as myself, I will confess with disarming frankness have
a problem. In a masterful display of rhetorical power and
force, the piece begins Monday night: pitchers at the Inn.
Tuesday night: quarter beers. Wednesday night: any special at the
Feve. Well, first of all, Wednesday night at the Feve is actually
any special except Fridays  get your facts straight,
you bunch of tea-sippers! As one reads past this tautly dramatic
opening, though, it transpires that the articles main argument
concerns the presence of a drinking problem at Oberlin. Citing not
only a survey but the above-mentioned alarming availability of alcohol
for purchase right here on campus, the writer points to the most
damning feature of all this debauchery: It is, in many cases, legal!
There is nothing stopping a 22-year-old senior from getting
a case of PBR and splitting it with their [sic] off-campus housemate.
Dont I know it! Not content with defiling the clear well of
the English language, though, the writer informs me of how many
drinks Im allowed to have before it constitutes binge drinking
 only four, although it doesnt say how big I get to
make them.
On closer examination, however, I found that an even deeper flaw
in logic lies at the heart of this puzzling editorial. The writer
complains about students going to the Feve bar or the Inn too often,
but binge drinking is really about getting really drunk and maybe
puking every time you drink. If I get moderately pickled every night
of my life, Im not a binge drinker  Im
a functional alcoholic! And that has the word functional
in it. But I like to think that those of us who behave in this supposedly
deplorable fashion are more than just functional alcoholics; were
wits, raconteurs and intellectual conversationalists who discuss
the great questions of our day with a Goldschlager-fuelled fire
and intensity rarely equaled among the more sober population. If
the reader demands a worthier example than myself, I need only point
to such charming individuals as Lynn Whitney Kaighin-Shields and
Cynthia Taylor, who remarked to me as I was writing this letter
that Faulkner was an alcoholic; Danielle Steel is not.
The editorial concludes with the prediction that college juniors
will drink less next year because the movement of many students
back to campus will provide more supervision for them. That may
be so  I suspect I have more faith in mankind than the Review
editorial board does  but, God willing, I will pass my classes
as scheduled and wont be around to observe such a distressing
state of affairs.